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MR. HEDGE'S ORATION, 



FOURTH OF JULY, 1838. 



AN 



ORATION, 



PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE 



CITIZENS OF BANGOR, 



ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1838. 



THE SIXTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



U. -' 



FREDERIC H. HEDGE 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 



BANGOR: 

SAMUEL S. SMITH, PRINTER. 

1838. 



1 1 3 S 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens: — I congratulate you on 
the sixty-second anniversary of American Inde- 
pendence. In discharging the duty assigned to 
me on this occasion, I am happy to meet an as- 
sembly like this, convened on the broad ground 
of American citizenship. Other grounds and 
other interests have been made too prominent, of 
late years, in the celebration of this day. The 
day belongs not to any partial interest or single 
cause, however sacred in itself. It belongs to 
the American citizen — a name, an interest Avhich 
includes all others and transcends all others. 
The day is national, and strictly national should 
our celebration of it be. Other interests shall 
have their due. Education, Temperance — the 
whole year shall be theirs ; but on this day we 
will know only our country, we will consider 
only those great principles of national polity 
which have made our country what it is ; and 
through which alone we can hope to maintain 
what we are and have. 

The anniversary of American Independence 
is distinguished from most festivals of secular 



origin, by its moral character. Other days have 
been set apart for the commemoration of indi- 
viduals or events. But this commemorates an 
act — an act, not of violence but of deliberation, 
not of the sword but of the pen — an act whose 
significance is strictly and purely moral. It may 
be regarded as characteristic of this age and peo- 
ple, that while the most striking events of the 
Revolution, its battles and its triumphs, pass un- 
noticed ; while Yorktown and Saratoga, so loud 
in their day, are voiceless now ; the quiet act of 
that provincial Congress which gave birth to the 
Declaration you have just heard, is proclaimed to 
us year after year, from the cannon's mouth, in 
vollies that sweep the coast from St. John's to 
Cape Salile — 

" Aiul thence, perhaps, rebounding may- 
Echo beyond the Mexique bay. " 

I consider this fact as one instance among many 
of that growing ascendancy of the intellectual 
over the physical in man, which marks and mea- 
sures the progress of society. As mankind ad- 
vance, mind gradually prevails over matter. 
Force is displaced by thought. In the field, it 
is no longer animal vigor but scientific calculation 
that carries the day. In civil affairs, moral power 
preponderates more and more over brute strength. 
It is no longer the tallest, but, theoretically at 
least, the wisest that governs. The very sym- 
bols of government assume a more and more ideal 
character. Instead of t\\e fasces and the sceptre, 



and the grosser ensigns of ancient dominion, we 
have written constitutions which define the power 
they represent, showing that mankind are gov- 
erned by ideas and not by force — a fact equally 
certain though not equally apparent in all ages 
and governments ; in despotic Asia as in republi- 
can America ; in the ninth century, under Char- 
lemagne and imperial edicts^as in the nineteenth, 
under citizen kings and popular assemblies. 

Mankind, I say, are governed by ideas and not 
by force. By these ideas I do not mean abstract 
speculations — I do not mean conclusions which 
have been obtained by any conscious process of 
the understanding, but those views and principles 
which a people imbibes with its earliest instruc- 
tion, which it sees reflected from all its institu- 
tions, and which it reflects back again in all its 
habits and associations. These constitute the 
only true sources of human authority. These give 
to governments a validity which mere external 
force could never impart. No external force 
can hold a nation in subjection any longer than 
it finds support in the popular idea. We Avonder 
at the passive obedience which the subjects of 
despotic governments yield to unjust and oppres- 
sive enactments. What hinders this people that 
they rebel not against their rulers ? It is not the 
fear of armed force that keeps them down, but 
those hereditary ideas of subjection which cen- 
turies of misrule have fixed in their minds and 
linked with all their associations and ways of life. 
Until these associations can be broken up, the 



6 

condition of that people admits of no permanent 
improvement. To them revolt itself brings no 
deliverance. They may conspire and slay their 
rulers. But what then ? No enlargement of 
privilege, no solid advantage accrues from such 
violence. To-day a tyrant is deposed, to-morrow 
a new one has assumed the rein, and the people 
submit because they know only submission ; and 
because the idea of arbitrary rule is ever upper- 
most in their minds. 

In the position to which I have now been led, 
we have a standpoint from which to interpret the 
whole philosophy of civil history and civil insti- 
tutions. Every nation is governed by its preva- 
lent ideas or habits of mind. These determine 
all its movements and shape all its laws. Hence 
the peculiar character of our revolution and its 
result in our present condition as a people. When 
we contrast that movement in American history 
with similar movements in the history of other 
nations, and particularly with the subsequent rev- 
olution in France, we are struck with what I 
will venture to call its naturalness. I mean its 
reason and necessity in the nature of the people, 
and the comparative ease with which its objects 
were accomplished, so far as their accomplish- 
ment depended on the popular will. It was not 
so much a revolution as an evolution. It was not 
an act of desperation, to which the nation were 
impelled by extreme pressure. We did not wait 
till stung by actual suffering. It was not here as 
in revolutionary France, where there existed no 



provision for liberty in popular sentiment, no in- 
troduction to equal rights^in loHg-cherished hab- 
its and traditions, but where the people, wronged 
and overburdened, lay still and patient until they 
felt the griping of hunger in their bowels and the 
prick of outrage upon their backs. We revolted 
at the faint shadow of a distant force, attenuated 
and enfeebled by protecting seas. They rebel- 
led against present want and the fear of death — 
against wrongs that had lashed into foaming fury 
whatever is foulest and fellest in unbridled souls. 
We owed every thing to the character and habits 
of the people — they owed every thing to the 
cogency of circumstances. With us it was the 
honoured of the land — our Adamses, our Otis, 
our Hancock and our Quincy — that headed the 
righteoiis cause ; there ragged scms culottes, train- 
ed in Bakers' queues, and the mothers of Saint 
Antoine, with ribald tongues and streaming hair, 
rushing into National Assemblies, led the van in 
the march of crime. Our revolution, in short, 
was the healthy offspring of a healthy parent ; 
of theirs it might be said — 

"Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, 
And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope ; 
To wit, an indigest, deformed lump, 
Unlike the fruit of such a goodly tree. 
Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, 
To signify — thou cam'st to bite the world. " 

Whoever will study the condition of these 
colonies during their dependence on the mother 
country will find there already developed, in all 



8 

the distinctness and force with which they were 
afterwards asserted, those ideas of liberty and 
principles of government embodied in our con- 
stitution. British aggression was only the pre- 
cipitating impulse which gave polarity and form 
to tendencies and attractions long held in solu- 
tion. The causes which led to our separation 
would hardly have been deemed sufficient to 
warrant that step by any people less ripe for inde- 
pendence than we were. The stamp act, which 
the stern resistance of our fathers forced the 
British government to repeal before it could 
fairly take effect, however odious in its principle, 
was by no means so threatening in its consequen- 
ces, that the citizens of Boston and of Ports- 
mouth should have ushered it in with ominous 
ringing of bells and funeral orations to departed 
Liberty. The additional expense of three-pence 
a pound in the article of tea, could hardly be re- 
garded as a national calamity. And even the 
Boston Port Bill, by far the most portentous at- 
tack on American liberty, mitigated as it was by 
sympathy and aid from other towns and States, 
did not, perhaps, impose a heavier burthen than 
the country has sustained, with more or less pa- 
tience, during the last year of republican admin- 
istration. Had not the people of these States 
been already free and independent in every habit 
and feeling of their natures, there would have 
been no difficulty in collecting that revenue. 
Peace would have seemed more desirable than 
the assertion of an abstract right by hopeless op- 



9 

position, involving immeasurable evils. The na-' 
tion would have paid the tax and pocketed the 
injustice, indemnifying themselves how and 
where they might. Nay, taxation might have 
been carried much farther than it was ever con- 
templated by the British government in r^Jation 
to this country. The screw whose faintest ap- 
plication, whose very exhibition our fathers re- 
sisted so warmly, might have been pressed home 
through all its spiral revolutions, the whole length 
of its thread ; before it could have screwed to the 
sticking-point of revolution, men who were not 
already screwed and braced in every nerve and 
purpose of their souls, by having breathed for a 
century and a half the thin air of freedom. They 
w^ere already independent ; they always had been 
so, ever since Smith, and Carver, and Winthrop, 
and Williams, and Penn. It was for the sake of 
this independence that they had come, as they 
expressed it, " to the outside of the world, " and 
stumbled upon famine and pestilence and the 
tomahawk. For this they had braved the rude 
welcome with which the new continent received 
its future lord, and sown their first fields with 
death, at Jamestown, at Charlestown and at Ply- 
mouth. With a great sum they had obtained 
this freedom ; they had no intention of selling it 
cheaply. They were already independent; they 
knew they were, they felt they w ere ; they al- 
ways had been; God willing, they always meant 
2 



10 

to be ; and when the decisive moment came, they 
had nothing to do but to declare that intention. 

The main interest of American history has, 
naturally enough, accumulated around the crisis 
which finally divorced us from the mother land. 
In the contemplation of this period, our atten- 
tion is diverted from the true date and origin of 
American liberty. The Declaration of 1776 as- 
serted our independence, but did not by any 
means create it; neither the sentiment in the 
mind of the States, nor the reality in their insti- 
tutions. Both the sentiment and the institutions 
of the country were as essentially democratic, 
two hundred years ago, as they are this day. 
They were the natural growth of the soil. Other 
sentiment or institutions, or aught unfriendly to 
liberty, could never gain foothold on these shores. 
In the first organization of their legislative as- 
semblies, the prophetic sense of the colonists re- 
sisted the encroachments of their rulers. "For" 
said they, " the waves of the sea do not more cer- 
tainly waste the shore, than the minds of ambi- 
tious men are led to invade the liberties of their 
brethren."* In justice to them, and in the spirit 
of their comparison, we may say that the stern 
and rock-bound coast does not more surely repel 
the advancing surge, than the stern and sturdy 
souls of the pilgrims repelled the advances of 

* Bancroft's History of the United States, 1834, from 
whence the anecdotes that follow, are principally taken. 



11 

civil usurpation. Not only did they strenuously 
oppose Parliamentary dictation, holding their 
charter from the King alone, but Royalty itself 
might not lean too hard on the privileges which 
that charter guaranteed. In 1620, when King 
James undertook to appoint a successor to the 
vacant office of Treasurer to the London Com- 
pany for Virginia, his interference was resisted 
as an infringement of the Company's charter, 
and another candidate was elected in the place 
of the royal nominee. As the colonies succes- 
sively kindled their fires along the coast, they 
successively formed themselves into representa- 
tive assemblies, in which the popular branch 
soon acquired the significance it has ever since 
possessed. In 1619, the first assembly of this 
kind, ever convened in the western hemisphere, 
met at Jamestown in Virginia. In 1621 that 
State received a written Constitution, nearly re- 
sembling the present, and essentially the same 
with those which were afterward adopted in the 
other colonies. With this Constitution it was or- 
dained, that " after the government of the colony 
shall have once been framed, no orders of the 
Court in London shall bind the colony, unless 
they be, in like manner, ratified by the General 
Assembly." Three years after, the Assembly 
decreed, with an early jealousy of arbitrary tax- 
ation, that " the Governor shall not lay any taxes 
or impositions upon the colony, their lands or 
commodities, other way than by the authority of 
the General Assembly, to be levied and imposed 



12 

as the said Assembly shall appoint." When 
Cromwell usurped the government of the mother 
country, Virginia still clung to the house of Stu- 
art, to which she owed her existence and her 
liberties. The conditions on which she was 
finally induced to accept the authority of the 
Protectorate, while they mark the wise policy 
of the government that proposed them, show 
how strong the hold, which the love of liberty 
then had upon the minds of the planters. What 
force could not effect, was accomplished by a 
voluntary deed which secured to them their char- 
tered rights and popular government. It was 
agreed upon surrender, " that the people of Vir- 
ginia should have all the liberties of the freeborn 
people of England, should entrust their business, 
as formerl}^, to their own General Assembly, and 
have no taxes levied but b}^ their own burgesses, 
no forts erected or garrisons maintained but by 
their own consent." To select from the history 
of this State one more illustration of the inde- 
pendent feeling which characterized the early 
settlers; when, in 1658, the Governor and Coun- 
cil declared the dissolution of the Assembly 
because they had been excluded from its sessions, 
the Assembly not only denied the legality of the 
dissolution, but having first, through a commit- 
tee, solemnly declared the popular sovereignty, 
they removed the Governor and Council from 
office, thus asserting their right, not only to make 
but also to unmake their rulers. The Governor 
was then re-elected, and by taking the new oath 



13 

prescribed to him, acknowledged the validity of 
his ejection. 

Nor was Massachusetts less forward than her 
sister colony, in securing the independence of 
her institutions. Here, indeed, the principle of 
universal suffrage was not, as in Virginia, made 
the basis of representation. That privilege was 
restricted to the members of churches within 
the colony ; in order, it was said, " that the body 
of the commons might be preserved of honest 
and good men." This limitation of the elective 
franchise had its origin in the theological charac- 
ter of the Puritan settlement. Men who had 
emigrated for the sole purpose of enjoying reli- 
gious liberty, as they termed it, that is, of estab- 
lishinof a church accordino; to their own notions of 
ecclesiastical polity, may w^ell be pardoned for 
adopting every precaution that would serve to 
secure the purity of their religious institutions. 
A check on the right of suffrage was considered 
to be necessary, and doubtless was necessary to 
guard the church from episcopal influence on the 
one hand, and from heretical corruptions on the 
other. Nor was an ordinance of this nature, by 
any means, so unfriendly to the liberties of the 
colony as, judging from our standpoint, we might 
suppose, or as such a restriction would be at the 
present day. The unanimity of sentiment, in 
matters of civil polity, was so great, that a limita- 
tion of the elective franchise was likely to affect 
only the ecclesiastical affairs of the colony, and 
these were cheerfully entrusted to those who 



14 

felt the strongest interest in their prosperity. 
The restriction was not felt to be burdensome, 
and therefore was not. On the other hand, while 
due care was taken to assert the prerogative of 
the church, the Puritans were not slow to resist 
the influence of the clergy, whenever it came in 
collision with the democratic tendencies of the 
times. As early as 1632 it was thought best that 
there should be an annual choice of Governor 
and Council ; the same incumbents, however, be- 
ing, as now, liable to re-election. Accordingly 
they were re-elected that year. But in 1G34 the 
Rev. John Cotton, who had lately come to the 
colony, opposed the policy of rotation in office, 
and attempted, by his professional influence, in 
the election sermon of that year, to prevent the 
removal of the then magistrates. But notwith- 
standing the deference paid to the pulpit at that 
time ; when it came to the polls, the old officers 
were removed and new ones chosen ; a fact which 
shows how little the Puritans at that period, in 
the conduct of their civil affairs, were disposed 
to accept dictation, even from those whom their 
feelings and habits had taught them to revere 
above all human authority. With the same quick 
sense of rights, which resisted encroachment at 
home, did these colonists oppose the interference 
of the mother country in the management of 
their concerns. Occasions were not wanting 
when it was deemed necessary to show a bold 
front to King and noble. It was in the year just 
mentioned, that jealousy of English influence in- 



15 

troduced the Freeman's Oath, " by which every 
freeman was obliged to pledge his allegiance, 
not to King Charles, but to Massachusetts." And 
when, two years later, some of the English no- 
bility, induced by the example of Sir Henry 
Vane, and tempted with the hope of gain on this 
side the water, offered to join their fortunes with 
the new colony, on condition of an hereditary 
seat in the Assembly ; the pilgrims answered, 
with a noble disregard to the immediate advanta- 
ges of such an alliance ; that " where God bles- 
seth any branch of any noble and generous fam- 
ily with a spirit and gifts fit for government, it 
would be a taking of God's name in vain, to put 
such a talent under a bushel ; but if God should 
not delight to furnish some of their posterity 
with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose 
them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the 
commonwealth with them, than exalt them to 
honor, if we should call them forth when God 
doth not, to public, authority." 

I cite these instances from the early history of 
the colonies, to show in what spirit they Avere 
founded, and what was the character of their first 
institutions. If, in later years, there was any 
change in the character of these institutions, it 
grew from a necessity imposed by foreign rela- 
tions, and not from any change in the temper and 
habits of the people. The people were never 
other than free in their temper and spirit. Liber- 
ty was not with them, as it was and is elsewhere, 
a speculation to reason about, or a name to swear 



16 

by, but a long experience and a habit of life. 
The noblest examples of it lay at the foundation 
of their country and at the bottom of their hearts ; 
and never, so far as their will can be gathered 
from popular acts, were they known to swerve 
from the old ideal and the early love. 

So notorious was the independent spirit of the 
American colonies, that Mr. Burke, in his well 
known speech before the British Parliament in 
1775, makes it the pivot of his argument in favor 
of conciliatory measures. " There are only three 
ways of proceeding," he says, " relative to this 
stubborn spirit — either to change it as incon- 
venient, or to prosecute it as criminal, or to com- 
ply with it as necessary." The former he pro- 
nounces impracticable. " The temper and char- 
acter which prevail in our colonies are, I am 
afraid, unalterable by any human art. We can- 
not, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce 
people, and persuade them that they are not 
sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood 
of freedom circulates. The language in which 
they would hear you tell them this tale would 
detect the imposition. Your speech would betray 
you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on 
earth to argue another Englishman into Slavery."* 

Thus planted and thus nurtured the States 
grew toward the harvest that was to pluck them 
from the parent stem ; and when the fulness of 
time came, it found them fully ripe. To this 

* Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. 



17 

training, and their long, practical acquaintance 
with the spirit and use of liberty, that we are to 
ascribe the peculiar character and consequences 
of the American Revolution. In which two 
things are specially noteworthy. First, the ab- 
sence of those destructive outbursts of popular 
violence by which revolutions are usually char- 
acterized. Not liberty but bondage is the parent 
of excess. The most convulsive movements of 
that exciting period developed no tendencies to 
anarchy or outrage. There was nothing mon- 
strous or inhuman, no culbute generale, no break- 
ing forth of the devil in man, to triumph over 
law and love. No " insurrection against God," 
no invasion of ancient sanctities, no uprooting of 
cherished faiths. The very mobs of the Revolu- 
tion had in them a spirit of justice, and leave the 
historian little to regret. When the province of 
Massachusetts occupied the novel position of a 
civilized and populous community without mag- 
istrate or ruler or any acknowledged authority, 
the old government having been abrogated by 
the arbitrary policy of England, it was hoped 
that the prospect of anarchy would instantly 
enforce complete submission. But what hap- 
pened ? The suspension of public authority 
brought no suspension of the public peace. No 
infraction of ancient laws gave reason to appre- 
hend the necessit}" of invoking the protection of 
that force whose authority the State had disa- 
vowed. All things went on as before. The 
citizens met in their unchartered conventions 
3 



18 

and passed resolutions, and recommended mea- 
sures which had all the force of laAvs with a peo- 
ple in whose experience law and liberty were 
but diverse operations of one spirit ; — showing 
what a mere formula is legislation, where good 
sense and good will rule, and how, as Mr. Burke 
says, " it is obedience which constitutes govern- 
ment and not the names by which it is called." 
I shall not attempt to contrast with this sobriety 
those atrocities which, fifteen years later, under 
the name of the French Revolution, amazed the 
world, and threatened to make liberty a name for 
outrage and crime. I shall rather ask your 
attention to another characteristic feature in our 
own Revolution, and that is, the ready formation 
of our Constitution from elements then existing 
in the minds and habits of the people. And here 
it is, that the connection, to which I have alluded, 
between the form of a government and the prev- 
alent ideas, or moral character, of the people gov- 
erned, is most apparent. The American Consti- 
tution has been sometimes represented as a sys- 
tem formed upon abstract principles. A late 
traveller in this country cites it as an instance of 
a purely a priori scheme of polity, carried into 
successful operation.* This view, it seems to 
me, entirely mistakes the true origin of our Gov- 
ernment. So far from being an a priori system 
framed on abstract principles, it has probably 
less of this character than pertains to most gov- 

* Harriet Martineau ; Society in America. 



19 

ernments ; less, certainly, than the Constitutions 
of the several States. It was not a theory, hatch- 
ed in the brains of speculative men, but a system 
of policy which owed its origin entirely to exist- 
ing circumstances and obvious necessities. What- 
ever of theory there is in it, was of ex post facto 
creation. All the elements lay close at hand. 
The union of the States was spontaneous, the 
result of their position. This furnished the pri- 
mary fact which the first conventions did but 
express. The Federal compact defined the du- 
ties and relations implied in that union ; and the 
Constitution of 1788, consummated that compact 
with permanent provisions for the fulfilment of 
its terras, but without changing the character or 
policy of the States themselves. The Govern- 
ment of the country, so far as its daily operation 
on the citizen is concerned, was essentially the 
same before the adoption of the Constitution, as 
after. When, therefore, we speak of our institu- 
tions as an experiment, let it be remembered 
that they are an experiment for w^hose success, 
two hundred years of actual operation furnish no 
inconsiderable security. Had it not been so, had 
not the Constitution originated, as it did, in the 
circumstances of the times and the character of 
the people, had it been a mere theory founded 
in speculation, it never could have had a mo- 
ment's authority. It must have failed in its first 
application. For no fact in human experience 
is better established, than the impracticability of 
such theories. It is not in the power of man, 



20 

departing from no government at all, to frame 
one, a priori, which shall apply to any given peo- 
ple. Governments are not formed, but grow. 
" All the most important institutions of the 
world," says an acute French writer on this sub- 
ject,* " are the result of circumstances, and not 
of deliberation." Man not only does not possess 
the power to create institutions, but he has not 
even the power to create their names. And 
unless the name which an institution bears is 
subsequent to the thing, and the necessary pro- 
duct of the thing, it may be regarded as a sure 
sign that the institution so designated will not 
work, will not live. We have thus in the nom- 
enclature of governments, the sign of their origin 
and of their destiny. Constitutions forjned on 
abstract principles, have names invented for the 
purpose, antecedent to the thing. 

Of such bubble Constitutions, which burst 
as soon as blown, history, and particularly 
modern history, has many examples. Men of 
speculative minds, in all times, have loved to 
blow them for their own amusement. The Eno-- 
lish philosopher, Locke, blew one for the people 
of South Carolina, with three orders of nobility, 
which they blew to pieces as soon as it was waft- 
ed to them. The kingdoms south of us, Brazil, 
Mexico, and Colombia, are blowing new ones 
continually, and never yet can produce one that 

* Compte de Maistre. Essai sur Le Principe Generateur 
des Constitutions Politiques. 



21 

will hold together. But the most remarkable ef- 
fort in this kind, was that which the Constituent 
Assembly in France, during the Revolution, after 
twenty-nine months of diligent inflation, gave to 
their country, and which immediately dissolved 
by its extreme tension. 

On the other hand. Governments, which are 
formed of existing elements, and have their ori- 
gin in the character and habits of the people 
governed, are known by this, that the names by 
which their functions are called, are not made for 
the occasion, but have either grown from the 
institutions they designate, or else, having previ- 
ously existed, are assumed by those institutions: 
as their most fitting and natural designation. 
Whoever will apply this theory to American 
institutions will find, in the names which they 
bear, the history of their origin, and the promise 
of their perpetuity. Names, which are destined 
to be permanent, and to have a wide significance 
in the history of mankind, like the institutions 
they designate, are not made, but grow. They 
are accidental, and, for the most part, humble in 
their origin, and derive from some secondary 
meaning, the importance which they acquire. 
The word, throne, which, for more than two 
thousand years has been the symbol of despotic 
power, meant originally a footstool, then a seat 
with a footstool attached to it, one of the earliest 
distinctions of Royalty. It had probabl}^, the 
same force as the term " Chair," in Representa- 
tive Assemblies ; and " Chair," may one day, by 



the same process, become as significant as throne. 
So, to cite an instance of an opposite character, 
drawn from our own institutions, the word. Cau- 
cus, is supposed to have originated in the meet- 
ings of some ship-caulkers, held more than a 
hundred years ago, in the ship-yard at Boston. 
Having outgrown its original application, this 
word has now come to designate an institution 
which, though not one of the written functions 
of our Government, is vitally connected with all 
its functions, and lies at the foundation of all its 
movements. I accept as a good omen the exist- 
ence of such a word in our political vocabulary. 
As it is impossible to frame a theory of govern- 
ment which shall be found applicable to any 
given time or people, so it is impossible to trans- 
plant the government of one age or country, and 
graft it upon another. Suppose, for example, 
the people of Turkey, smitten with the love of 
liberty, and enamoured of American prosperity, 
should undertake to copy ouf institutions. Sup- 
pose a few revolutionary Spirits to succeed in 
overthrowing the existing Government. Sup- 
pose the Sultan converted into a President. In- 
stead of the Sublime Porte, there is a House of 
Representatives ; the Cadis are become District 
Judges, the Agas, Captains of Militia. All this 
might be done, but the moment the new system 
was to take effect, it would be found to have no 
effect at all. It would be found that Asiatic 
ideas had nothing in common with American in- 
stitutions, that the new wine was too smart for 



23 

the old bottles. It would be found, in short, just 
as impossible to establish a Republican Govern- 
ment in despotic Turkey, as it would be, at the 
present moment, to establish an absolute Monar- 
chy in the United States. The only efficient 
government is that which arises spontaneously 
in the character and habits of a nation. It was 
owing to their utter neglect of this fundamental 
principle, that the theorists of the French Rev- 
olution failed in their attempts to regenerate 
France. They could pull down, but they could 
not build up. Hence, those wild abortions, which 
under the name of Constitutions, there and else- 
where, have been sent into the world, as if to 
show the incompetence of man to originate those 
ideas which he and all his institutions can only 
reflect. 

We owe the success of our Revolution, in es- 
tablishing for us an independent, and, as we trust, 
a permanent form of government, not to any 
nice arrangement of functions, or careful balance 
of powers in that instrument, but mainly, I ap- 
prehend, to the spirit of liberty which animated 
the people, for whom that system was framed. 
And it is to this spirit. Fellow Citizens, that we 
must look for the perpetuity of our institutions. 
We do wrong, if we suffer ourselves to depend 
on the perfection of our Government, for the 
preservation of our liberties. What is to pre- 
serve the Government 1 It is not the body that 
makes the spirit, but the spirit the body. It is 
not your Temperance Societies that make tem- 



24 

perance, nor your Anti-Slavery Societies that 
make anti-slavery. These societies could never 
have existed, had not the sentiment which they 
express, existed before them. In the same man- 
ner and for the same reason, it is not the free 
government that makes the free-man, but the 
man the government. Let the sentiment of lib- 
erty become extinct in the breasts of this people 
to-day, and to-morrow the government has be- 
come a despotism. Whatever may be the name 
by which it is called, or the forms under which 
it is administered, it is no longer free. The form 
of a government affords no true criterion of its 
character. There may be a form of freedom 
where no freedom is. Government more des- 
potic never existed, than the French Democracy 
in the reign of terror. When Csesar Augustus 
usurped the supreme control of the Roman State, 
he was careful to leave unchanged, the old Re- 
publican forms. He waived the imperial name, 
while most intent on securing the imperial power. 
He even reformed what seemed to be encroach- 
ment on the popular liberties in his predecessor. 
He caused his authority to be confirmed to him 
from term to term, by new elections. He flat- 
tered the ear of the nation with the long familiar 
names of Consul, and Senate, and Tribune, while, 
gradually concentrating in his sole person, the 
various powers intended in those functions ; he 
secretly undermined the government, when most 
he seemed to maintain it. There was a time 



25 

when this could not have been. There was 
a time and a spirit once, 

" That would have brooked 
The eternal devil, to keep his State in Rome, 
As easily as a king." 

But the liberties of the nation had been already 
undermined by bribery and corruption. Luxury 
and vice had opened the door for usurpation and 
the Caesars. The Roman people had ceased to 
exist. The body was there, but the soul had fled 
with Marius and with Cato. 

Freedom is not in the government, but in the 
people. In your own breast, or no where, is its 
citadel. There, or no where, it must be secured. 
There are not wanting, among the multiplied 
interests and complex influences of the present 
day, tendencies that threaten the stability of our 
institutions. Without being 

" Over exquisite 
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils," 

it would be easy to point out these dangers, in 
the ambition of your politicians, in the love of 
office, in the love of money, in the extravagance 
of fashion, in the disproportionate wealth of 
some and the consequent dependance of others, 
in the growing luxury of our cities, in the readi- 
ness with which we ape the follies and vices of 
elder nations. I might point them out, in those 
tendencies which belong to human nature in 
every condition, and in those which a republican 

4 



26 

form of government especially favours and fos- 
ters. " I found," says de Toqueville, " in the 
United States that restlessness of heart which is 
natural to men, where all ranks are nearly equal, 
and the chances of elevation are the same to all. 
I found the democratic feeling of envy, ex- 
pressed under a thousand different forms." He 
allows, indeed, that the Americans have made 
great and partially successful efforts to correct 
these imperfections, and to counteract, as far as 
possible, the natural defects of Democracy. It 
may be questioned, however, whether any check 
which the institutions of a country may provide, 
will be found adequate to control an evil which 
has its origin in the character of the individual. 
It was this same democratic feeling of envy, 
which, more than any other principle, hastened 
the downfall of the old republics. In Athens, 
particularly, the operation of this principle was 
continually manifested in the prosecution of those 
men, and the destruction of those institutions 
whose influence was most essential to the welfare 
of the State. The Athenian could not endure 
that a fellow citizen should be called just, and 
therefore moved the expulsion of him who was 
so designated. Because Pericles was not a mem- 
ber of the Areopagus, he procured a vote of the 
people by which the jurisdiction of that ancient 
tribunal was abridged ; and when arrived at the 
head of affairs; breaking through the restrictions 
which had hitherto regulated its appointments, 
he made himself by force a member, and thus 



S7 

opened a breach through which corruption soon 
entered, and authority went out. The Areopa- 
gus was the Supreme Court of Athens. With 
this first invasion of its privileges, dates the de- 
cline of that State. I say there are not wanting 
in the elements of our national character, the 
materials from which gyves and bonds may be 
made. We have no security in our institutions. 
We have no protection from abroad. We have 
nothing to fear from abroad.' Our only ground 
of fear is in ourselves. Our only protection is 
self-government. " Men are qualified for civil 
liberty," says Mr. Burke again, "just in propor- 
tion to their disposition to put moral chains upon 
their own appetites, in proportion as their love 
for justice is above their rapacity, in proportion 
as their soundness and sobriety of understanding 
is above their vanity and presumption, in pro- 
portion as they are more disposed to listen to the 
counsels of the wise and good, than to the flattery 
of knaves. It is ordained in the eternal consti- 
tution of things, that men of intemperate minds 
cannot be free ; their fashions forge their fetters."* 
In alluding to these subjects, I would not be 
thought — least of all, on this day, would I be 
thought to entertain any serious apprehension 
as to the stability of our national blessings. I 
should be unworthy to enjoy them, did I feel 
any. In a republican government, mistrust of 
the people, is treason against the State. Instead, 

* Letter to a member of the National Assembly. 



28 

therefore, of perverting the joy of this feast, by 
dwelling on the evil that may be, let us rather 
consider the brighter aspects in our horoscope, 
and contemplate the far more probable good, 
which the future has in store for us, and for all 
men. The season is sacred to hope. Its office 
is to inspire new confidence in the destinies of 
our country and our race. While it quickens 
the desire, it claims the belief that the blessings 
we now celebrate, may be ever more widely 
diffiised and more fully developed, as year after 
year unlocks new faculties of Nature and of mind. 
When we contemplate what the last fifty years 
have done for human culture and human happi- 
ness, we involuntarily ask, what the next fifty, 
or the next hundred, shall add to the account. 
It is not till within these centuries, that the idea 
of progress in human affairs, has dawned upon 
mankind. That the race, as a race, has a destiny 
to accomplish — that society, as it exists at any 
one time, is not an accident, but the necessary 
result of all that has been, and the necessary 
condition of all that is to be — that the earth, 
which witnessed the first unfolding, is destined 
to witness the final development of all that is 
in man — these are views and facts which have 
but lately come within the sphere' of human 
observation. They are still but faintly discerned 
in the distant horizon. And yet there was always 
progress in the world. Always, since the flood, 
there has been a steady procession in human 
affairs, a continuous development of the human 



29 

mind. Single nations have decayed, single races 
have died out, single arts have stood still, but 
Humanity never. There never was a period in 
the world's history, so dark and dismal and dis- 
eased, but there was progress somewhere. What- 
ever stagnation there may have been on the sur- 
face, there was always life below. If it went 
out here, it burst forth there. When one phase 
of human culture waned, another was ready to 
dawn. When one set of ideas became extinct, 
another was starting into life. When the old 
world and the old faith died out, the new was 
there. When existing influences were insuffi- 
cient to check the deep corruption of the times, 
some new influence stepped in and saved the 
race. And so, under ever new influences and 
aspects; never abandoned by the Powers above, 
but always aided and refreshed, as its day requir- 
ed ; with varying fortunes, in various lands, the 
unconscious race has crept or sped, but never 
staid. By the Ganges, and the Nile, the Alphe- 
us, the Tiber, the Rhine, and the Potomac, it has 
marked its traces and its triumphs. Six thousand 
years, the sun and the stars have watched it 
moving ; but never until now — with the momen- 
tum acquired in these latter years — has it felt its 
motion. Now, first awakened to self-conscious- 
ness. Humanity is moving on, with new speed 
and conscious aims, to the fulfilment of its high 
calling. When we trace the progress of human 
culture in time past, we find that there has 
always been some one tribe or people, to whom 



30 

this culture was specially committed. The Hin- 
doos, the Greeks, the Romans, the Franks, have 
had their turn. At present, the Anglo-Saxon 
race bears this charge. To them, above all the 
tribes that are in the earth, are entrusted the 
^reat interests of Humanity. The only race 
that can be considered as a rival with this, is the 
Russian. But that nation, though advancing 
with portentous strides toward the consolidation 
of its own vast empire, and the filling up of its 
own vast territory, has not yet begun, by means 
of its colonies or its literature, to exercise a 
world-influence. The Anglo-Saxon race, on the 
other hand, emanating from a kingdom of the 
most inconsiderable dimensions, have, within the 
last three centuries, possessed themselves of the 
fairest portions of the earth. From that small 
island have gone forth influences that girdle the 
world. In each of the five great divisions of the 
globe, this race is present with its language and 
its arts. Never, since the Roman empire, did 
one people attain such sway. 

" Wind may not sweep, nor wild wave foam", 

where that sway is not felt. In either hemis- 
phere, English culture is now the moving force, 
and the last hope of man. It would be interest- 
ing to follow out the probable effects of this cul- 
ture in other lands, — to see this indefatigable 
race gradually displacing the influences and the 
tribes, which have hitherto retarded the progress 
of man, — to see them climbing the Himmaleh, 



31 

piercing central Africa, stretching along the 
mountains of the moon, and overspreading Aus- 
tral Asia, with their beneficent sway, — awakening 
once more the wizard Genius of the East, and 
carrying, wherever the sun shines or the winds 
blow, the sacred gifts of Freedom. 

But the limits of this occasion will not allow 
us to lose ourselves in the boundless prospect 
which these views unfold. Our attention is call- 
ed to that portion of the race in which we are 
more particularly interested, to which we belong. 
The prospects which our own country unfolds, 
are sufficient to task the boldest imagination. 
On this subject much has been said and sung. 
The mind of this nation is prone to revel in the 
future. We love to sketch the rising prospects of 
our land, and are sometimes accused of overdraw- 
ing, in the draughts we make on coming years. 
It may well be doubted, however, whether all 
that has been said or sung, or dreamed, on this 
subject, has yet reached the mark of truth and 
soberness. It is not easy to overstate the limits 
of American increase. Fifty years have now 
elapsed since the present Constitution was adopt- 
ed by the thirteen States, which then composed 
the Union. Within that period, the thirteen 
States have become twenty -six, and the three 
millions, thirteen millions. According to the 
rate of increase, at which the population of this 
country has hitherto advanced, fifty years more 
will give fifty millions, and a hundred years 
more will give two hundred millions. Mean- 



32 

while, if I rightly interpret the course of events, 
the Anglo-American race will have displaced or 
absorbed every other race in the northern divis- 
ion of this continent, below the sixtieth degree ; 
and the whole vast territory, between Hudson's 
Bay and the Isthmus of Darien, will have become 
the habitation of a people, sprung from the same 
stock, governed by the same institutions, speak- 
ing the same tongue; — a fact as yet unknown in 
the annals of man, and whose bearing on the 
destiny of man, no tongue can tell, no thought 
can guess. " The vision," says one of our states- 
men, " is too magnificent to be fully borne." 
What is to be the condition of this mighty em- 
pire ? We have no sufficient data from which 
to calculate the probable duration of our Federal 
Government. Our present views and feelings 
crave its continuance ; and every good citizen, I 
think, will feel it his duty, at present, so far as in 
him lies, to promote that end. But we should 
do great injustice to our national character, we 
should belie the progress we have already made 
in the science of self-government, and the right 
apprehension of our own interests, if we sup- 
posed that the dissolution of the Federal Gov- 
ernment must necessarily be attended with the 
dissolution of our liberties, and the downfall of 
our prosperity ; that it is impossible in the nature 
of things, that these now confederate Republics 
should dwell together, unconfederate in form, but 
leagued in spirit and in fact ; that the written 
articles cannot be annulled, without annulling 



33 

also, the elder covenant of brotherly love. As 
if two or more enlightened and Christian fami- 
lies could not live side by side without a formal 
constitution, or as if the time would never come, 
when whole States shall be composed of enlight- 
ened and Christian families. I have not so learn- 
ed the progress of society, nor do I believe that 
war is the only possible condition of border 
States, or that mankind, after so many thousand 
years' teaching, are never to understand the 
policy of peace. I believe that all the elements 
which are essential to our prosperity, will remain 
to us, whatever changes may take place in our 
political relations. One who has scanned with a 
curious eye these rising Republics — I refer again 
to M. de Toqueville — has thought to observe 
that the union of the States is becoming stron- 
ger, while the Federal Government is growing 
weaker. I am not prepared to endorse this con- 
clusion, as a matter of fact, but it seems to me to 
be a fair deduction from the general principles 
which govern society at the present day. Union 
is the leading tendency of this age. Individuals, 
families, states and nations, are drawing nearer to 
each other. Every where, mankind are coming 
to discern more clearly that they have but one 
interest, and to feel more intensely that they are 
heirs of one hope, and brothers of one blood. 
On the other hand, and in consequence, chiefly, 
of this increased attraction, governments, in the 
most civilized parts of the world, are gradually 
growing weaker, and will continue to grow 



34 

weaker, just in proportion as mankind are united 
among themselves; for the very obvious reason, 
that strong governments are not needed where 
such union exists. It is only because mankind 
are not perfectly united among themselves, that 
governments are needed at all. A perfect state 
of society would be one, in which friendly agree- 
ment should be the only rule. Things which 
cohere of themselves, require not that they 
should be tied — and whenever society shall have 
attained that perfect union to which human cul- 
ture is constantly tending, there will be no gov- 
ernment but education. Our Federal Govern- 
ment was instituted for certain specific purposes. 
Much good has been effected by it, and doubt- 
less, much more is still to be effected. But if 
ever the time shall come when those purposes 
can be better answered in some other way, or 
when they shall cease to be important, the Gov- 
ernment will dissolve of itself, as the capsule 
bursts when the seed is ripe. The real union 
having become mature, the formal union will no 
longer be needed. Whatever may be the form 
of our Government, the national character will 
probably remain the same, in all its essential 
features, for an hundred years to come. And so 
long as the national character remains the same, 
we shall continue to grow, we shall continue to 
prosper. And, what is of far deeper conse- 
quence than the growth of territory, or the su- 
perficial extension of our present prosperity, we 
may contemplate, I think, in the more perfect 



35 

development of those principles which have 
made us what we are, a solid increase and a more 
general diffusion of the blessings we enjoy — a 
prosperity w hich shall extend inward and down- 
ward, as well as outward ; a prosperity from 
which none shall be excluded, to whom there is 
given a soul to feel, and a will to strive. We 
have very imperfectly apprehended the meaning 
and value of American principles, and American 
institutions, if we imagine that they have already 
accomplished all that they are destined to accom- 
plish for human improvement : especially for the 
improvement and elevation of those classes to 
whom the present unequal distribution of earthly 
good has assigned the lower walks of labour and 
of life. The perfect equality of the human race 
is the idea which lies at the basis of our Consti- 
tution. I look in vain for the realization of this 
equality in the present condition of society 
among us. I see striking, far-reaching, fearful 
inequalities. I see high and low, rich and poor, 
vulgar and respectable. I see some born to 
every possession that can gladden and embellish 
life, and some born to every privation that can 
make it loathsome. Some are born to luxury 
and ease, some are born to drudgery and filth. 
" Some go forth sandalled and mantled, to walk 
on smooth terraces and velvet lawns, while some 
are doomed to tread the Alpine paths of life, 
with bare feet and naked breast, against driving 
misery, through stormy sorrows, jaded, mangled 
and chilled." And what is worse, far worse, 



36 

some are born to rule and some to serve, some 
are born to knowledge and some to ignorance ; 
some, I had almost said, are born to virtue and 
some to vice. Was it for this, that Heaven 
sent to struggling, grovelling man, the mes- 
sage of its love, and opened to him in this 
new world, a new school and a new hope ? Not 
so. Fellow Citizens, not so, shall the ends of 
this revelation be answered. Not so, shall the 
deep wants of this age be satisfied, and the long- 
cherished, long deferred hope of humanity ful- 
filled ! The time must come, when the unright- 
eous distinctions, which now divide the family of 
man, shall be softened, at least, if not removed. 
Softened by education, by charity, by increase 
of privilege on one side and abatement of pre- 
tension on the other. The time must come, 
when, if there be still rich and poor, there shall 
no longer be high and low, master and servant, 
vulgar and respectable, ignorant and refined ; 
when a more liberal culture shall comprehend 
and reconcile these painful discrepancies, and 
gather into one fold of impartial regard, all 
classes, employments, grades and names. The 
time shall come, when new inventions, lighten- 
ing labor and redeeming time, shall remove from 
the lot of the poor, those obstructions which have 
hitherto checked the free circulation of social 
privilege and brotherly love. Their desert 
shall gush with new resources. The very rock 
on which their feet now stumble, some kind 
prophet shall smite to healthful issues. For them 



37 

too, shall be opened the everlasting fountains of 
intellectual life. The labouring man shall wipe 
the sweat from his brow, and steep his bread 
in the cooling wave ; the meanest shall drink 
thereof, and be filled. In those days, a more ex- 
tended mechanism shall take from the overtasked 
their heavy load, and abridge the hours of man- 
ual service. Wood and iron shall serve for sin- 
ews and for bones. The gases shall steam up 
from the bowels of the earth and relieve the 
toilworn hand. Unseen powers shall labour and 
drudge. Man shall no longer say to his brother, 
" thou art not worthy to sit at meat with me, I 
will have no fellowship with thee for thy works' 
sake ;" for the low necessities of life shall no 
longer preclude refinement of manner and dig- 
nity of person. The sacred frame of man shall 
no longer be bent and seamed with servile tasks. 
Different functions shall no longer have differ- 
ent spheres of privilege and honour. Moral 
worth shall then constitute the only distinction ; 
and the soul, in every state and station, shall have 
that scope and reverence which God intended, 
when, from the bosom of his OAvn eternity, he 
sent it forth, to dwell in space and to work in 
time. 

These, Fellow Citizens, are some of the fruits 
which I dare to look for, in the full and final un- 
folding of American principles. And permit me 
to say, that, did I not look for such things, I 
should esteem all that has yet been won by the 
blood of our martyrs, and the labours of those 



38 

who, in time past, have toiled for our salvation, as 
of little worth. All that now is, I esteem only 
as the condition of something better, that is to 
be, — as a step towards that perfection to which 
the race is slowly, but surely moving. I 
speak not of these things as near at hand. They 
lie yet far removed in the depths of time. Our 
eyes shall not see, our hands shall not pluck these 
latter fruits. When a few more years have been 
added to the sum of those which have chronicled 
our country's growth, we shall rest in her bosom. 
" Life's fitful fever over," we shall reck no 
more of human distinctions and earthly wrongs. 
Unheeded by us, this day shall come round in 
its season, never more to break our slumbers with 
its early tumult. Unheeded by us, our coun- 
try's banner shall wave : but our children's chil- 
dren shall see new stars and new honours in its 
ample folds ; and a nation such as the world has 
never yet known — millions upon millions of 
free, enlightened, and virtuous citizens, enjoying 
equal rights and equal blessings, filling every 
valley and nook of this vast territory with the 
proofs of their wisdom, and the fruits of their 
genius — shall then, perhaps, celebrate as reali- 
ties, what we can only contemplate as dreams. 



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